Aha, I have a license for SuperDuper! That’ll do it! Except my license had expired so I couldn’t use it.
Softraid and big sur how to#
So now how to actually undertake the backup in a way that was resilient to failures, kernel panics and restarts? Running rsync from the command line was one option - but I’m not a command line guru and was worried I’d get my flags wrong and not properly copy metadata. My friend Nick allowed me save some dollars by lending me two 6TB drives which I could use as backup media. So I needed to find a way to backup 6TB of data. ARGH! On the bright side, by formatting the drives I could select a 64kb stripe size instead of the recommended and preferred 16kb stripe size the RAID array was using now and that was causing the kernel panics on any macOS version less than Ventura for M1 Macs. Erase the RAID array and start again, formatting the drives and going from scratch. All my Mac’s are upgraded and I don’t fancy trying to downgrade any of them. But SoftRAID 6.0.3 is only compatible with Big Sur. I eventually find a support note - and random threads in the forum - that there is a known bug in SoftRAID 6.3 that prevents resizing and growing RAID arrays. Off to the SoftRaid website and support forums I go. It wouldn’t let me go beyond the current 6TB. I happily clicked the button and tried to enter my new volume size. Now I could use that nifty feature to upsize my volume to 12TB. It took days, but I ended up with my existing array of 4 x 2TB but now it was on 4 x 4TB disks. I dropped in a replacement 4TB drive, and the Thunderbay took a day or so to rebuild the array using 2TB of the new 4TB. One at a time, I removed an existing 2TB disk - setting the array to a degraded mode. This feature I would use to my advantage to grow the size of my array. RAID 5 allows any one disk to be removed at a time and continue to operate.
Softraid and big sur software#
Preparing the Wayīack to the story… the SoftRAID software has a neat feature within it that allows the user to resize a RAID volume if the disks have additional capacity than is used by the volume. My winding adventure has also been able to resolve this problem - although word is Ventura will eliminate some macOS bugs that were the root cause. Incidentally, for many months now this RAID-array, with SoftRAID as the management software has been causing hardware panics and reboots on the M1 mac mini it’s connected to. This array sits in a cupboard connected to a headless M1 mac mini, so all operations need to be managed through screen sharing with Screens or SSH. The 6TB of storage this provided me was almost full. It all started when I reached the capacity of my RAID-5 formatted array of 4 x 2TB drives. I’ve emerged the other side, ultimately unscathed, but the journey certainly could have been easier. I’ve had an adventure with my OWC Thunderbay 4-disk drive array this week.
Softraid and big sur archive#
Adventures in SoftRAID ← Home About My Podcasts Photos Reading On This Day Surprise Me! Newsletter Archive Save Money! Search Stats Also on Micro.blog Adventures in SoftRAID Aug 21, 2022
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